Increasingly, many computing systems, including smart phones and tablets use wireless network devices to communicate with a variety of wireless networks, such as cellular networks, including LTE, Video over LTE (ViLTE), and Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Such high-speed cellular networks and technologies allow the computing systems to deliver multimedia experiences for their users, including live video. The multimedia experiences may be provided via various applications installed on such computing systems, including applications such as Skype™, WhatsApp, or other applications. An operating system, such as Windows®, installed on the computing system allows these applications to use the wireless network device (e.g., a modem) to transmit and receive data. The speed of the data transfer between the cellular network and an application, such as Skype™, depends upon several aspects, including the bandwidth of the cellular network connection, the data transfer capabilities of the network device, and the data transfer capabilities of the operating system and its interface with the network device.
Such interfaces between the wireless network device and the operating system have been standardized to allow such interfaces to be widely usable. The standardized interfaces are closely tied to a specific bus protocol and hence they may inadvertently limit the data transfer rate to the bus protocol being used with the operating system. Thus, there is a need for methods and systems that provide for a control path to enable at least one of the two data paths for a network device (e.g., a modem).